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Students pout at kissing ban

AMOROUS students at a university in Shanghai are the latest campaigners for free speech in China as they mobilise against a campus ban on kissing and cuddling.

Administrators at the East China University of Science and Technology have caused uproar by organising “morality patrols” to stop public smooching. Some students have even been chastised for squeezing two to a bicycle as they travel to lectures. “It’s ridiculous,” one complained. “But we don’t have to put up with it.”

A few years ago university authorities could have relied upon local newspapers to support such disciplinary measures. However, the Communist party’s hold over social behaviour is slipping away and the media sense that issues outside the realm of political power are fair game. Shanghai’s newspapers, battling for sales, seized on the story, devoting many column inches to the travails of the lovelorn students.

According to leaked party documents, Zeng Qinghong, the vice-president,